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The firefighters at Vancouver's fire hall No. 2 are some of the busiest in Canada, now increasingly spending their days in Downtown Eastside reviving drug addicts who’ve overdosed on the street, as CBC found out joining a crew for a two-shift ride-along.

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Scenes from a ride-along with Vancouver firefighters on the front lines of Canada’s fentanyl crisis

He's not talking about knocking down a fire or even rescuing a cat stuck in a tree.

Instead, he's once again kneeled down trying to revive a drug addict. This one isn't responding to two doses of opioid antidote naloxone, which goes by the trade name Narcan.

'Want us to bag him?' are the first words out of a firefighter's mouth as he and his colleagues approach an unresponsive man whom paramedics are already working on. (CBC)

Oxygen, pain stimulation (like a knuckle in the rib) and shots of Narcan are the first steps to try to revive a drug user, say the first responders who work out of Vancouver's fire hall No. 2, one of the busiest in Canada.

But none of those things are working on this man.

A paramedic decides to open the patient's airway through his nose after three doses of Narcan fail to revive him. (CBC)

"You guys are like the pros now," says a paramedic who arrives on the scene.

They are usually first on the scene, in an SUV, responding to medical calls after someone passes out on the street in the city's Downtown Eastside.

"There it is. Nice work," says Lynch as the man comes back to life after repeated shots of Narcan. It blocks the effect of opioids like fentanyl, the deadly drug that's caused a public health emergency in B.C. and threatens to do the same elsewhere across the country.

Approximately two people die every day in B.C. from accidental overdoses, and 62 per cent of those cases are linked to fentanyl.

A task force is working on the problem, but it's the front-line paramedics and firefighters who see the devastation of bootleg fentanyl up close. The powerful painkiller is said to be up to 100 times more potent than morphine or heroin.

"It's very difficult to see humans in that kind of trauma and situation. You're walking into an alley that's got a lot of different smells in it — needles, rats, garbage everywhere," says Lynch, who's been a firefighter for three years.

"It’s very difficult to see humans in that kind of trauma." 0:39

"You just walk by lines of different people shooting up and then you treat the third one on the left, and it's just a matter of time before the first two go down as well.

"We are putting a small Band-Aid on a big cut."

By the time they reach their next patient, in a tent city, another addict has already revived her with Narcan.

Free Narcan kits are distributed to any addict who wants one.

"You gave her four shots of Narcan?" Lynch asks.

"Yes," a man in a neighbouring tent responds.

'Narcan is going to wear off, and you are just going to OD again,' Lynch tells a woman who was just revived after an overdose in a tent city in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. (CBC)

The young woman is oblivious to her soiled shorts and the thick smell of human waste.

They convince her to go to hospital before the Narcan wears off and she passes out again.

"We need to walk you out to the ambulance," Lynch tells her. "You don't have a choice. You are just going to OD as soon as it wears off."

Lynch tells CBC how he had to revive a 24-year-old girl twice in the same month.

"It wears on you, on your soul."

Their next patient is a clean-cut, middle-aged man lying on the floor at a homeless shelter.

A staffer has already given him one shot of Narcan, but it didn't work.

Lt. Doug Conacher of the Vancouver Fire Service looks on as Lynch gets to work on a man who has overdosed and isn't responding to Narcan. (CBC)

"He had taken fentanyl and was told it was really strong fentanyl and a lot of people were overdosing," says Lynch, who believes the man was wise to get himself to a Lookout Society shelter before he passed out alone on the street.

Lookout Society, which operates several shelters in Greater Vancouver, decided two years ago to train its staff to handle overdose cases and to keep a supply of Narcan.

This story is part of a CBC investigative series on the fentanyl addiction crisis in B.C. and its implications for the rest of Canada. Read more: